MyInstruments

Here I would like to present my instrumentarium. I believe it can be useful and inspiring, it can bring you some idea and give you an insight of what my didgeridoo world looks like. I am not in illusion that everything I do is „right“, so maybe you can also learn on my mistakes. Everything here is my vision of the matter. I expect from you to make your own truth, as with anything. If it is similar to mine or not is not really important.

If there is anything more you would like to know, drop me a comment or e-mail.

Thank you.

C didg

This is the One. I play it on 4 songs regulary; Stinkirum, Lake of Awareness, Point of Line, The Spatialist.  2 meters. Hornbeam. 3,5 years old now.

Everything is in place with this didge. It would be a very good compromise of everything, but it is not a compromise. It has strong „kick“- the push from the diaphragm – like in the beginning of  „Stinkirum“. It is strong in mid freqs making it very articulate, good for cascading faster parts. It has nice toots. C- G#-D,  these G# and D are a bit over. You can hear them quite nicely in the beginning of the song here.

It has a very nice „fat“ sound.  Juicy and with character. Reacts to everything. Very well balanced back-pressure. Very nice small and percussive sounds like for Lake of Awareness… The  lower outside has the „muscle“ part which quite well resembles the sound in a way. I often try songs on this one, it is like a reference point for me. For the high didges at least. It is not very loud acoustically but still loud enough to be played in the street.

This tube was the best teacher I ever had.

G# didg

This is an old bloodwood didge from Melle (Amsterdam).  It stayed in the shop for 8 years before i bought it. Seemed to be uninteresting. Funny world. It is very nice. One of the very few I play I did not make myself. I play 3 songs on it; Mandala, Koridoro del Sono and Misao iz Daleka. About 180cm long, maybe 183cm. D A# E

This one has a very nice round shape, also very clear because it is quite cylidrical and hardwood. It can be played very nicely very softly, the drone becomes very smooth.

Toots are smooth,  thin and  far apart – so i choose the songs for it also bearing this in mind . The didge often lacks acoustical power when played acoustically. The „push“ can be obtained in the recordings or live, but it is much more of player’s push, and less of the instruments so it gives the kick a different quality of body.

The Needle

There was a stick so tiny and slick that it would surely be overlooked by a didgeridoo hunting man or woman who knows what she or he is doing. Fortunately, I did not know what I was doing, so I took it home. And as it is usually not the case it was on a surgery desk for making didgeridoo quite soon.
Now all the doctors in my head gathered, scratched their beard and murmured… What could this be… how to make a didgeridoo out of this? We played a lot of long sticks, but never so tiny as this…
And as presence and practice were the best teachers available, ever, at all times, there was a revealing and astonishing first blow. There was a very natural feeling of much greater resonance than one would expect from this little long stick. And the easy silky toots…
It is a 235cm long didge in F#. The first 8 toots of it are: A#, F#, C, E, G, A#, C#, E. It is nice to play acoustically, BUT where it really shines through are its amazing dances in front of a microphone. Yes, dances is a good word, this didge taught me a lot about various microphone usages and new possibilities of didgeridoo sound. It was first played on Korvo Eksaltiko, and it was really a revealing experience. I believe this didgeridoo, called The Needle didge because of its appearance, has strong place in didgeridoo spectrum.
In short, it has very very nice bass which is deep and can be articulated well. It has enormous crazibilites of toots. The timbre is special and nice, non obtrusive, but powerful. It has smaller dynamic range which suits close miking better. The instrument is dynamically inert in the best sense of it. It can go, but only when you press acceleration pedal hard. There is no way to hurt yourself, microphone, or somebody in the audience accidentally. And it is still in the size that can fit in most places.
I tried to make a copy of it for travelling, but I missed one toot a bit. You could say no big deal, but it puts me to minor scale instead of major, so it can be a big deal, or it can be not, depending on what you want. But I realized many things from and about this instrument, and it will be found in the stories to come…
The point of this little story lies in the fact that something completely new cannot be in something already well known. Things come in their forms unexpectedly, and they do ask for some attention to be discovered….

in Little bit of everything